Jeffrey E Paul Ph.D.

Expertise

Jeffrey E. Paul is a Research Professor in the Social Philosophy and Policy Center at West Virginia University. He was previously a Research Professor at the Center for the Philosophy of Freedom at the University of Arizona from 2013-2022.  He is Professor Emeritus at Bowling Green State University, where he served as Professor of Philosophy and as Associate Director of the Social Philosophy and Policy Center which was formerly at Bowling Green. He played a pivotal role in the original founding and development of the Social Philosophy and Policy Center, where he led the Center’s unprecedentedly successful fundraising campaign and also created and directed the Center’s influential resident scholar and conference programs. He was a co-founder of Social Philosophy & Policy, published by Cambridge University Press, which has the largest circulation of any philosophical journal in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada. He continues in the role of Executive Editor of the journal. He has been a Visiting Scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

Professor Paul’s primary areas of research are moral and political philosophy, the history of political philosophy, and the history of political institutions. He is currently writing a timely and extremely important major history of American political institutions from the American Founding to the present, which will include a fundamental examination of the establishment, development, and influence of graduate education in the United States upon these institutions. His recent publications include “What Does Egalitarianism Require?” and “Justifying Taxation” for Social Philosophy and Policy. In previous years Professor Paul published numerous articles in academic journals and presented many lectures and papers at professional gatherings. He has also edited or co-edited sixty published collections of scholarly articles on moral and political philosophy, including Labor Law and the Employment Market: Foundations and Applications (with Richard Epstein, Transaction, 1985) and Reading Nozick (Rowman and Littlefield, 1981).

Education

Ph.D., Brandeis University, 1974, Philosophy